Sam’s glance went to Orkney, to the Shark, to Step and Poke, and to Herman Boyd. But it was Zorn who put their verdict into words.
“It’s up to Hagle and me to undo the harm, so far as we can. We’ll have to clear Trojan—that’ll mean going to the principal.”
“I’ll do it!” Hagle declared.
“We’ll let the class have the straight story—that’ll be my job, I guess. And about the fire—both of us will be ready to testify you could have had nothing to do with starting it. Anything else?”
Sam shook his head slowly. “I don’t think of anything else now. But”—he paused, conscious of a new feeling for Zorn, not a liking but a feeling lacking much of the old bitterness—“but this is going to be pretty tough for you, Ed.”
“That’s my affair,” said Zorn. He said it simply, evenly, with no trace of gruffness. And Sam understood. They had found the admirable part of Zorn’s code: as he himself might have said, he’d take his medicine without whimpering.
CHAPTER XXV
VINDICATION
In twenty-four hours the big fire had burned itself out. A smart thunder shower, followed by a soaking drizzle, breaking the long drought, helped to check it; just as the valiant labors of the settlement men, reënforced by farmers of the neighborhood and drafts of town firemen and volunteers, counted in preventing its spread around the end of the lake to the pavilion and cottages. But, as a matter of fact, the lake itself and an inlet penetrating deeply into the shore were the most effective checks. Here the fire burned to the water’s edge, and stopped because it there found nothing more to burn; but for a day, in spite of the rain and the efforts of the fire brigade, acrid clouds of smoke hung over the blackened area, proof that in the accumulated woods waste there were still smouldering embers. In the end, of course, these lingering fires died out, and the smoke clouds thinned and vanished; and there was left a scene of desolation and destruction, a stretch of gaunt, charred and leafless trees rising out of a mass of gray, ash-strewn debris.
“Kinder melancholy foreshore for them summer folks to be contemplatin’,” Lon philosophized. “Still, they don’t have to look at it, if they don’t want to. And they’ve got their nice little, fancy-painted houses left, and that’s good luck for them. And in another year or two, the stuff’ll be growin’ green again—old Natur’ is like Charity in coverin’ a multitude o’ sins—and except for the bean-pole effect of the dead trunks, things won’t be so distressin’. No; the lake shore’ll be mended a good long while before some reputations is—eh?”
Sam was of the same opinion. It would be a long, long time before people forgot the performances of Ed Zorn and Jack Hagle. Zorn had carried out his pledge. He had gone among his classmates, and had cleared the slate for Trojan and Sam and the Safety First Club. He had told his father all he knew of the fire. And then he had dropped out. It was no surprise to Sam to learn, one morning, that Zorn had left the school and the town for a time. It was rumored that his father had despatched him to an institution, which was celebrated for its strict discipline, and which continued its term through the summer. In his case out of sight did not mean out of mind, but it did mean that at the school affairs could go on, undisturbed by rash ambition and reckless striving for honors.